


We Boxed With Our Shadows

by Catwithamauser



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of canonical kidnapping, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-21 19:19:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8257411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catwithamauser/pseuds/Catwithamauser
Summary: She dreams of it sometimes, of the basement, cold and damp and always dark, sometimes, rarely, lit by a single naked bulb...Or, Laurel still has nightmares.  Frank attempts to help.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I've been trying to move away from writing angst, given all the shenanigans of this season...  
> I had a relapse. Clearly. Send help.

She dreams of it sometimes, of the basement, cold and damp and always dark, sometimes, _rarely_ , lit by a single naked bulb. She dreams of the cold press of metal against her temple, against her tongue, the small of her back, of the burning skid of ropes against her wrists, the sharp catch of a knife blade against her skin. She dreams too of the gnawing hunger, the gnawing fear that was even worse, chewing through her stomach, her chest, leaving her cold and numb, body trembling with fear and dread.

She dreams of the terrible words that men with shadowed faces spoke to her, letting her know there was no rescue, no end, that no one wanted her back, that there was no one to fight for her, that she was alone, always alone, because the people who were supposed to love her didn’t care enough to fight. She dreams of that too, of the deep, deep emptiness, the _lack_ she felt after they told her, of the long eleven weeks, though it seemed like far longer, she spent after they told her, silent, alone with nothing but her thoughts, her doubts to keep her company, left with a hole where her heart should be, just a corrosive aching emptiness in her chest.

And she dreams of bloody lips and bloody fingers and the coppery tang of it against her tongue, against her throat. She wakes with the taste of blood in her mouth, heart pounding and tears rolling down her cheeks. Not often, but often enough.

She rarely lets anyone spend the night in her bed, rarely allows herself to stay over because while the dreams don’t come often, they do come, with far more frequency than she’d like and she simply doesn’t have the words, doesn’t really think they exist to explain, to describe the things in her brain, the terrible pounding echoes of terrible things, of violence and pain and fear, yes, but also the loneliness and heartbreak and abandonment that were almost worse.

And that’s the thing she fears no one will be able to understand. She doesn’t talk about what happened because she fears they will hear only what they want to hear, kidnapping and ransom and masked men with guns and her eventual, long-overdue rescue, will be unwilling, unable to hear the things that still gnaw at her bones, that still send Laurel running her fingers over the long faded scars on her wrists, still expecting the sharp hiss of pain, the slide of blood, the hours and hours and hours of darkness, of silence with only her own mind, her own body for company, for comfort.

She’s not sure she could speak of those things even if she wanted to and she doesn’t, oh how she doesn’t. Not now, not ever, not in the eight years since it happened, not even with the parade of therapists her father forced on her until she turned eighteen and found her own silence to be the best therapist.

So she avoids staying over, kicks the men, the women who share her bed out into the night or, when she can’t or won’t, when she feels the steady creepy of anxiety like the slow drip of a faucet, rising, rising until she knows that the dreams are waiting, stage left, anticipating their cue, she retreats to the couch, pretends she has to study, has a big test coming up, pretends she needs to watch some Primera League game live, can’t DVR it because that spoils everything. She makes a hundred thousand excuses to explain why everyone she’s ever slept with since she was sixteen has woken, at least once, to find her missing, find the sheets cold and Laurel sprawled asleep at her desk, tucked into the cushions of her couch, neck and back and shoulders cramped and her eyes bleary and bloodshot, waking with the taste of blood and cold metal and terror on her tongue.

She tells some of them, more when she was younger and the subject couldn’t be avoided, less as she grew older, as she gained distance, gained scar tissue over the ripped places in her mind, as the scars on her body faded and she stopped being asked about them, but still, she does tell some of them.

She told Sasha, who she dated most of her sophomore year, junior year too, Sasha with the faded purple scar across her chin, thick and ropey, from a plane crash when she was eleven. She tells her because she thinks Sasha'll understand, at least some of it, tells her because she walks into her apartment one day after class to find Sasha pressed flat against the floor under her bed, breath reeking of booze and she tells Laurel, tells her of those terrible seven minutes, seven minutes, Sasha repeats, after the engine failed and she didn’t know if she was going to live or die, didn’t know what would happen after the plane finally met the earth again, how she wished for most of those seven minutes that it would all just be over, that the blackness, the nothingness would finally just come for her, eat her up, how she didn’t feel anything approaching relief when she woke up in the hospital four days later and discovered she was alive and mostly whole.

So Laurel tells her, tells Sasha about the twenty weeks, though it seemed like far long, every breath an eternity, the five months she spent in the same state of suspension, hovering somewhere between alive and dead, in some strange netherworld, unsure of what breath would be her last, sometimes wishing for it, other times petrified that it would come. She thinks she’ll understand, the uncertainty, the waiting, like hovering on the edge of a knife blade, waiting for the cut, waiting for _something_ , simply wishing that it, whatever it was, would come. She thinks Sasha will understand how that was the worst part, the time spent waiting, for the action, for the crash, for the bullet in the back of her skull, for the knife across her throat.

And when Sasha doesn’t, or can’t, or won’t, that’s the worst part too, because she’s unwilling or unable to see past the surface of the terrible things, to see past the masks and the guns and the ransom demands, see that there are worse things than violence, worse things than threats and fear. And that’s the end of Sasha.

Except it’s not because somehow Sasha decides to take it on herself to tell more than a few of their mutual acquaintances, tell them of the terrible things. And Laurel loves Brown, loves it with all of her heart, except she can’t, not once her friends start looking at her like she’s going to shatter, look at her with pity, with caution in their eyes, look at her with words and smiles that are just a little too slow, too measured like they’re looking at a stranger who’s come and taken Laurel’s place.

And Laurel, well, Laurel spends an hour crying, a day and a half being angry and then she marches over to Sasha’s apartment, baseball bat in hand, and destroys the really fucking expensive Harley that she bought with the settlement money from the plane crash, that Sasha loves more than she loves Laurel, she knows that now; shatters, dents as much as she can with the bat, slashes both tires with the little pen knife she always keeps in her pocket. And then she strides up to her door, waits for long minutes until she opens it, finally realizing Laurel's not going anywhere, and she socks her in the nose, feeling a strange, bursting satisfaction when Sasha's nose, her upper lip turn red with blood.

“Fuck you,” Laurel tells her, smiling a terrible, sharp smile she learned from her father, learned from the masked men who became like her father during those terrible twenty weeks, calm and deadly and full of angles like razor blades. “Fuck you and your piece of shit Harley. If my name ever comes out of your mouth again, I’ll fucking kill you, don’t think I won’t.”

Sasha must believe her, must see the deadliness in her cold, lifeless eyes because she doesn't call the cops, doesn't speak to her again, or to any of the friends Laurel finds herself avoiding for months, doesn’t even meet her eyes when they pass each other in the library, the quad, when Laurel serves her bitter coffee at her part time barista job, forgets to add her sugar, every single time. And that's the end of Sasha.

She tells no one else until Frank.

Frank, who notices when she flees his bed, tries to sneak back to her own place at 4:00 a.m., or sneak out to his couch, notices when she tries, desperately to stay awake, keep her eyes open and her body stiff when he curls his strong limbs around hers, wraps his arms around her and tangles his legs with hers, keeps her tucked against his chest as his breath comes slow and even and Laurel wants desperately to let sleep claim her too. But she can’t, won’t, because she can tell, tell by the churning panic sitting low in her gut, low in the back of her mind, that if she falls asleep the terrible things will come, the things that aren’t yet memories, that are too close to be called memories.

Mostly when she does wake, before she lets Frank into her bed, when she wakes shaking and gasping and there’s a hand against her arm, her back, her knee, she forces a deep inhale, forces her breathing to still, fighting down the urge to scream, to cry, to vomit, forces a smile, more like a grimace on to her face, because even at her worst moments, Laurel is always, always taking care of someone, always reassuring them that there’s nothing to worry about, that _she’s_ not something to worry about.

Before Frank she stills her heart, stills her breathing, stills the racing panic before she’s really able to, before she’s really ready to, and tells them that its fine, that its just a bad dream, just stress about school or a dream about the car crash she was in when she was twelve or that she was just dreaming of falling, lying, unconvincingly to her own ears. She swallows back the things she feels, swallows it down until she’s the only one that knows it’s there, lurking like a snake in the grass, and tells them it’s fine. And yet somehow they all buy it, every one of them, because they don’t care to know the truth, don't want to know the truth of the darkness, the shadow behind her eyes, can’t stomach what it is, what they know it is, but lie and tell themselves they don’t.

Except Frank, Frank who notices things no one else does, who sees the things in her she tries to hide, tries to lie and pretend don’t exist.

She wakes, the third time in the weeks since she started the thing, whatever it is, with Frank, wakes with the taste of blood in her mouth, wakes with a scream dying on her tongue, panic churning in her stomach and lingering whispers in her mind, wakes with memories of darkness, of her death hanging over her head like a blade, ready, always ready to fall.

She wakes suddenly, unsure what’s drawn her from her dream, her heart pounding and her fingers cold, her wrists chafing against nothing. Her fingers clutch at her chest like she wants to rip vents in her skin, open herself up and send the fear, the corrosion left by the terrible things, those long five months, spilling out of her, spilling across the bed. Laurel looks around, eyes wide and panicked, finds familiar blue eyes staring at her, deep and calm like still water. Frank.

She shrinks back from him, though he’s not touching her, doesn’t touch her, though she can tell he wants to, fingers reaching out, flexing like he craves her touch, his eyes full of something she wants to hate, something suspiciously close to love, and asks her what she was dreaming of.

She can’t tell him, even if she wanted to, just shakes her head as she fights down the rising panic. And Frank, somehow, he doesn’t press and doesn’t give her that disappointed skeptical look she’s seen too many times to count on the faces of other people she thought she could let herself love and doesn’t say anything when she ignores him and settles down on her side, back to him and pretends she falls asleep even though they can both hear the choked sounds of her sobs, see the desperate shaking of her shoulders. He doesn’t try to touch her either, and for that Laurel is grateful beyond words, but she can hear him, hear the slow noises of his breathing beside her, and she knows he doesn’t sleep either, knows he spends the rest of the night on his back, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling as Laurel pulls her knees to her chest and pretends everything is fine.

"That was the third time, Laurel," he says the next morning, voice soft and yet still rough with sleep, eyes blinking slowly in exhaustion. "Its not stress and its not nothing.”

“I’m fine,” she assures him, lying through her teeth, she thinks they both know she’s lying. “Just getting used to Philly and law school and everything. It’s nothing to worry about.”

Frank just frowns, scrubs his hand across his face, through his beard. “Look,” he tells her after a moment, like he had to collect his thoughts before speaking, set his words in the proper order. “You don’t have to talk about it, but I'd like it if you did. Because I don’t think it’s gonna go away. And I don’t want to be the one to go away, so I’d like it if you gave me something."

She doesn’t tell him then, or the night ten days later when she wakes again, terrified and gasping, strangled cries dying in her throat as Frank’s hand against her arm wakes her. It’s only two weeks after that, the fifth nightmare since she and Frank became she and Frank, that she cracks the door to him, lets Frank see the horror inside, lets him know the things that haunt her.

She dreams of steel and blood and darkness, of slow moving shadows that speak in hisses, of waiting, waiting for a something that never comes, wakes screaming when the waiting becomes too much.

She knows she’s no longer in the basement as soon as her eyes open, knows it because she feels the slide of soft sheets against her skin, sees the hazy light filtering in from the window across the room, she just doesn’t know where she is. She’s sitting up, one hand fisted in the sheets, one hand trying to dig trenches into her chest, her breath rasping in her ears, hard and fast.

Laurel lets herself double over, give into the feeling of terror that still burns through her skin, the hand in the sheets now tangled in her hair, tugging, hard enough to sting, at the strands, trying to pull herself back to whatever present she finds herself in, return her mind to where it belongs.

And as she comes back to herself, Laurel realizes there’s another body there, in the room with her, it’s hand soft and solid against her arm and she jerks sharply away from where she thinks it is, sound that’s a little to close to a scream clawing its way out of her throat.

The hand pulls back instantly, speaking words that are soft and slow and Laurel begins to recall where she is, not the basement, no, and not her apartment, not there either. Frank’s apartment, Frank with his beard and his crooked smile and the thing that sizzles between them like a wildfire, probably doused now, probably smothered by Laurel’s fifth nightmare. Even amidst her panic, her churning, clenching fear it makes her sad, that she’s losing this dangerous, intoxicating thing with Frank because her brain will never let her rest, never let her forget the terrible things she’s lived.

“Hey,” Frank tells her gently when she finally comes back to herself enough to understand his words, pulls back so he no longer touches her, like he’s afraid she’ll flinch at his touch. “You were dreaming again.”

She nods, blinks away the beginnings of tears, swallows hard until she almost feels like herself again, until the tang of blood fades from her lips. She loves him, Laurel thinks suddenly, loves him for not calling it a nightmare, for treating it like something normal, something that doesn’t need to be shied away from. It’s her life, it’s ugly and sometimes awful but she’s been through too much to be treated with kid gloves now, treated like she’s a fragile, breakable thing, like her dreams come anywhere near the horror of those five months.

“You want to talk about it?”

“I,” she begins, fully intending to refuse the offer, again, to tell him that no, she doesn’t want to talk about it, will never want to talk about it. Instead, words slip out of her like water, like sand. “I was kidnapped. When I was sixteen. For five months. That’s what I dream about.”

“You were...” Frank begins, trails off with a long swallow, his eyes going wide. Well, she thinks with grim satisfaction, that answers the question about how much he knew, how much Annalise had him dig up on her. He may have known enough, enough to know she was something dangerous, something fearsome, but he didn’t know that.

“Kidnapped,” she repeats, trying to nod, trying to keep her voice steady, the same familiar panic rising in her chest, threatening to choke her, setting her heart racing and ice settling in her fingertips. But she barrels on, barrels forward, like she can’t stop herself, for the first time since it happened able to speak of it without pause, without thinking through every word that slips past her lips, trying to judge what she can say, whether Frank can handle what she could say.

She watches his face as she speaks, as the terrible things spill from her mouth. She watches for the reaction that always comes, that always, always follows the terrible things she confesses. First his face crumbles, crumples with grief, with heartbreak and then, then he looks angry, his brows pulling together, jaw tight as he clenches his fists in the bedsheets.

And then, then comes the thing Laurel didn't expect, the thing she's never seen before. Something creeps onto his face, slowly, so slowly she doesn't notice it at first, begins to shine behind his eyes and lurk behind his face, something she doesn’t even know how to identify until long moments later. Pride, she finally decides and something like awe and, the last one startling her so much she almost, almost forgets the taste of blood still in her throat, the scrape of coarse rope against her wrists, something like love, perhaps, or the beginnings of it.

She tells him of the butt of the gun against the back of her head, of waking up already in the basement, of the fear and confusion and terror in those first few moments, of the slowly dawning realization that there was no mistake, that no, they’d really meant to take Laurel, that she wasn’t going home, wasn’t ever going to leave under her own power. She tells him of the tang of metal on her tongue, the press of it against her temple, the press of a blade against the soft skin of her neck or against her ribs, tells Frank of the low, curling words they spoke to her, explaining to her that she would be staying with them until her father paid them five million or ten million or twenty million; she doesn’t remember, forces herself not to remember just how much she wasn’t worth to her father, just how little meaning her life had for him.

And she tells him of the slowly dawning realization that she was probably going to die, unsure of when, unsure of how, but certain that it would be coming once her captors’ patience began to wear thin, once it became clear there was no ransom coming. And the boredom, she tells him of that too, the hours and hours of silence, of darkness that had her first jumping at every whisper of movement, every creak of the house, thinking it would be the last thing she heard, before her panic, her roiling fear gave way to boredom, to the not so infrequent wish that something, _anything_ would just happen, that the precarious stalemate would end, somehow, even if it was just in her death, because it would be something, would mean that she was no longer sitting, alone, silently in the dark basement, her hands tied and her stomach rumbling with hunger, rumbling with terror, with uncertainty.

She can feel the panic growing in her chest, in her brain, feels her breath speed up, hears the racing, distant rushing sound, loud in her ears, knows she’s slipping back, back to the basement, to the single naked bulb and the cold, cold silence, the shattering fear.

And then she feels warmth against her hand, Frank’s hand, she realizes belatedly, covering her hand with his and tangling his fingers with hers, stroking his thumb over her knuckles, slowly, repetitively. She focuses on the skim of his hand, focuses of the feeling of his rough, calloused fingers against her skin and slowly, almost imperceptibly, he draws her back, back to herself, back to the present, draws her away from the whirlpool of her memory and back to dry land, back where it’s safe, where she can breathe again.

She focuses on the feeling of his hand, focuses on his breathing, calm and even, syncs her breathing with his, draws herself away from the edge of panic, and she continues on, barrels forward with all the horrible, terrible memories, keeping herself anchored to the present by the press of Frank’s hand, but his silent, steady presence next to her until she exhausts all words, until there’s simply nothing left to say.

“Oh Laurel,” he breaths when she can’t speak anymore, when the words finally die on her tongue. She waits for him to tell her he’s sorry, waits for the pity to creep back into his eyes, but it never comes. The pride, the awe remains, the thing that might be love, but can’t be, can’t possibly be. “Oh Laurel, you’re amazing.”

His free hand reaches out, thumb slipping against the angle of her cheekbone, brushing away the tears she didn’t even realize were falling, his other hand still tangled with hers, stroking softly against her skin. “You’re amazing, and so, so strong. To go through that, to still be standing, to still be so kind and smart, to not let it knock you down, to not be angry. You’re fucking shocking. I’m in awe of you.”

Laurel laughs, she can’t not, laughs wetly around her tears, around the sobs that rise in her chest, that settle, hard in her throat, shakes her head, because she’s not, she’s nowhere close to perfect, nowhere even close to alright. “I’m sorry,” she whispers around her sobs, around the panic that rises, like the tide again. “I’m alright.”

“It’s ok,” he tells her, thumb running across her cheek again, his eyes soft, his fingers softer. “It’s ok if you’re not. You’re allowed to not be ok.”

“I…” she begins, chokes on her words, on her grief.

“You don’t have to protect me, pretend that you’re ok, that everything’s fine,” he tells her, his voice somehow shaking but firm, turns her hand over to brush his thumb over the soft skin of her palm. “It’s ok if you wanna be weak, or sad or angry, just for a little while. Or forever, that’s ok too.”

She makes a sound like a laugh, like a sob, maybe both, maybe neither, Laurel isn't really even sure, and yet the churning panic remains at bay, remains distant, like Frank’s simple presence can keep her from slipping back into the past, back to the terrible damp basement.

“Thank you for telling me,” he whispers, leaning forward, balking, his lips hovering inches away from her mouth, looking down, sheepish, apologetic, like he knows he shouldn't be touching her. “I know it won’t help, but thank you anyway.”

But she wants him to, Laurel thinks, suddenly, she wants him to touch her, wants to forget the rough grasping of the masked men, forget the bruises they left on her arms, the press of metal against her skin, wants to feel the tangle of his fingers with hers, wants to feel his body pressed against hers, surges forward and meets his lips with hers, mouth catching the corner of his, soft but insistent, urgent.

Frank turns his head slightly, lets their lips meet, soft and slow and he wraps his arms around her body, pulling her tightly to him, into the solid press of his body, one hand against the small of her back, the other tangling in her hair.

“You’re strong,” he whispers against her lips, again. “You’re strong and you’re brave and you’re kind. And I’m amazed by you.”

“Don’t,” she tells him. “Don’t. I’m not anything like that.”

And the second shocking thing, the second shocking thing of the night that seems to be full of shocking things, is that he accepts it, doesn’t challenge her or try to insist that she is, that she’s brave or kind or amazing or anything she doesn’t want to be, anything she doesn’t feel like she is. He just accepts what she is, whatever that is, and Laurel is honestly not sure, not anymore, just accepts it with a little nod of his chin, jaw tight but eyes soft.

“What can I do?” he asks her then. “Is there anything I can do?”

Laurel shakes her head, slowly, but presses forward into his chest, waits a long moment while Frank tries to decide what to do, until he must decide that it’s ok, that she’s not going to balk, lets Frank pull her body closer to his, lets her head pillow against his chest, lets her breathing sync with his slow, deep breaths, lets her still pounding heart slow in time with the steady, thumping beat of his, tattooing against her cheek. “No,” she whispers against his skin. “It’s not something fixable. _I’m_ not something fixable.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he tells her, softly, the tentative beginnings of his smirk creeping into his voice, his fingers brushing against the space just above her elbow. “You don’t need to be fixed. You’re right the way you are. I just meant is there anything I can do to make it easier, to, I dunno, make the dreams a 4/10 instead of an 8?”

Laurel laughs, quick and sharp, the sound bursting out of her before she even realizes its coming. “I…I dunno actually.”

She can feel him nod, feel the motions of it through their joined bodies. “If you think of anything,” he tells her. “Just lemme know. I meant it, what I said a couple of weeks ago. I wanna stick around, even if the nightmares do too.”

“Frank,” she begins, because his words sound too much like a commitment she isn’t sure she wants, isn't sure she should want it quite as desperately as she does.

“Look Laurel,” he tells her, voice suddenly rough again, hand sliding against the plane of her ribs and she feels his lips whisper against her brow. “I like you, a lot. Your dreams, the things that happened to you, they don’t change that. You’re still you, and I still like you.”

“Ok,” she nods, biting her lip, hard, because she thought that’d be what Sasha said after she told her, had hoped, every time, that telling someone would mean they’d understand her, her silences, her caution, just a little better, be better able to love her, and every time that had been proven a lie, every time her confession had sent them running. She knows it will be no different with Frank. She’s broken, shattered still, and when he finally realizes nothing he does is going to fix her, going to make her whole again, well, she thinks that’ll be the end of Frank in her bed.

“I mean it,” he tells her, like he can hear the lie, the doubts in her voice. “I don’t like you cause I think you’re perfect. I know you’re not, and that’s ok. I’m not either. But I want to be with you, whatever that means. And if there’s anything I can do to make things better, I want to do it.”

“What if there’s not?”

He shrugs again. “Then there’s not. I still want to be with you. I’ll just have to get used to waking up when you do.”

“I,” she starts, falters. “You don’t…”

“I want to,” he insists, pulling back to look down at her, Laurel finally raising her eyes to meet his, blue and deep and, she thinks, sincere. “I mean it. Ok?”

She nods, bites her lip. “Ok.”

“So let me know if I can do anything to help,” he tells her, still holding her eyes. “Even if you want me to pretend I’m asleep, or go hit the couch for an hour or two. Whatever it is.”

Laurel nods again, presses ahead, suddenly compelled to continue. “You hands,” she tells him, slowly, cautiously, watching his eyes, his face for any sign of untruth, of disgust or anger or pity, anything that reminds her of all the people that came before him, who backed away when it got hard, when the full truth of Laurel’s damage, of her hurt emerged, who, like her father, said they loved her and left her, alone, when it counted, when she needed them most. “When you were holding my hand. I know you weren't even doing anything. But it helped. A little.”

“Ok,” Frank says again, nodding slowly, jaw tight and eyes soft. “Done. Anytime you need me. I mean it.”

“But I’m ok now,” she tells him, doesn’t feel like she’s reassuring him, like she has to convince him she’s fine, that everything is alright, just feels like she's telling him her thoughts, her feelings. “Really.”

“Alright,”he murmurs, hand still smoothing over her back. “You ok enough to go back to sleep?”

“I…” Laurel’s words falter because she’s stuck, just stuck, can’t lie to him but she’s nowhere near ready to go to sleep, nowhere near able to shut her eyes and let her body relax, uncurl, nowhere near able to leave her hurt, her fear behind her, not just yet. Not when she still feels the pull of her past, sucking at her ankles, threatening to bring her back to that dark basement full of violence and fear and the moment before the crash. “I don’t really want to walk home this early, but I’ll camp out on the couch for a bit if that’s ok.”

“Laurel,” he tells her, voice suddenly hard, serious, his tone commanding her eyes to his. “If you wanna stay, I want you to stay. And if you're gonna stay, and stay awake, I wanna stay up with you.”

“You don’t have to...”

“S’alright,” he tells her around a long yawn, stifled against the skin of her neck but his words are sincere, his eyes sincere. “I want to. We can stay up for a bit more. I bet there’s some really great infomercials we can check out. Or, I can tell you a really long and pretty boring story about trying to go camping in a snow storm.”

Laurel snorts, chuckle rumbling out of her chest before she realizes its coming. “You got any others?”

“Oh I got plenty of stories,” he tells her, thumb brushing against the space between her shoulder blades, lips meeting her collarbone. “We got, what, four hours till the alarm goes off? I definitely have four hours of terrible stories.”

“Tell me something true,” she requests, feeling her eyes slip closed at the movement of his fingers, slow, and even.

“Something true,” he repeats. “Ok. Wanna hear about how I discovered I was allergic to cherries?”

“Cherries?” she presses, smiling despite herself, realizing suddenly, that she hasn’t been thinking about the panic still lingering in her bones, the quickness that still springs in her chest, has been focusing on Frank instead, on the press of his hands and not the distant memory of that dark, lonely basement, the slide of blood against her teeth. “Ok, I’m interested.”

Frank chuckles. “Good. Prepare yourself.”

Laurel feels herself grinning, feels the little thrill of surprise, of astonishment that she _can_ grin, _wants_ to grin, that she’s more interested in his story than the panic and fear still nipping at her heels. She pulls away from his arms, slides back against the headboard, slides her knees to her chest, hugs them tightly and waits, chin on her knees, waits for him to continue, letting her eyes slip half closed.

Frank slides back to lean against the wall as well, stretches his legs out of in front of him, gives her a little expectant look, prompting, his smile small and slanted. “You don’t have to stay all the way over there,” he tells her, giving a little wiggle to his eyebrows. “I like having you in my arms, as long as you wanna be there.”

She nods, head still pillowed on her knees. “I do. Yeah, I do.”

Laurel uncurls herself slowly, legs stretching out to brush against Frank’s, letting her exhausted body sag against his, letting Frank wrap his arm around her body, pull her tight into the crook of his arms, head pillowed against his chest.

“Ok,” he says, voice a deep rumble in her ears, low and rough and Laurel finds herself relaxing by degrees, not enough to sleep, not quite there yet, but enough to let some of the tension, the panic and wariness slide from her bones, enough for her to forget, for long seconds that almost become minutes, the five months of rope around her wrists, five months spent in the darkness of the single flickering bulb, five months waiting for the bullet that never came, waiting for the rescue that came far, far too late to save the girl that Laurel had been. “Cherries. Delicious and no good for me.”

“You allergic to any other fruit?” she mumbles before he can really begin the story, her mind settling enough that it can wander, that it can think of something other than the lingering echoes of her own screams in her ears. “Because I really like fruit. And I’m not sure I like you enough to give it up.”

“Nah,” he tells her with a low chuckle. “Just cherries.”

“That the only thing you’re allergic to?” she asks, the more she talks the less she thinks about anything else, anything other than Frank, his body solid and warm against hers, his heart sounding low and steady against her ear, anchoring her to the present, to him, the sound of his breathing soothing and constant.

“It is,” he confirms, teasing, his lips whispering against her shoulder. “You gonna let me tell my story though, or you wanna keep asking questions?”

“Dunno,” she tells him “Depends on your story.”

“Alright,” he says, yawns again, wide and bracing and Laurel feels herself swallowing hard to keep from yawning herself, fights against the urge and fails, gives a little echoing yawn in response, her eyes slipping closed, suddenly feeling the exhaustion in her bones, limbs heavy and leaden. “I’ll spice it up a bit. Make sure it meets your high standards.”

“Perfect,” she tells him around another yawn.

“Anything for you,” he tells her. “Anything you want.”

And when Laurel does eventually fall asleep, hours later, head pillowed against Frank’s chest, his arm, falls asleep far closer to the alarm going off than either of them would’ve liked, she doesn’t have the dreamless sleep she’d hoped for, doesn’t slip into nothingness, into blackness like slipping beneath the pulling, tugging waves. When she falls asleep, Laurel dreams, but she doesn’t dream of hunger, of boredom, of terror, doesn’t dream of knives and rope and masks like shadows.

Instead, she dreams of Frank’s low murmured words, dreams of his eyes, dark and blue and depthless, filled with something she still thinks looks almost like love, even though she knows its not, and his grin, smirking and slanted, dreams of the brush of his thumb against her skin, of the way it soothes her hammering heart. She dreams of comfort and safety and the same strange, furtive, tentative feeling she sees when she meets Frank’s eyes, the thing that looks maybe something like love, that blooms, echoing in her chest, in her heart, small and fierce and taking root, taking form. For the first time since she was sixteen and the blunt barrel of a gun against the back of her head sent her tumbling into darkness, into the darkness of that narrow, damp basement, Laurel dreams and doesn’t wake shaking, gasping.

She wakes instead with her head against Frank’s chest, hair spilling over him and she presses her mouth against his skin, just above his heart, feels her lips pull into a smile even though she can barely keep her eyes open, even though exhaustion is singing high in her blood, her limbs heavy and slow.

There’s something wonderful, she thinks, about the morning, about waking up in Frank’s arms, something she could find herself getting used to, waking up with him beside her, and not curled, tight and small, into the couch or upright and cramped over her desk, not huddled alone and haunted by ancient ghosts, cowering from the darkness. There’s something, Laurel thinks, she could get used to about Frank himself, about falling asleep beside him, waking up in his arms, something she could find herself falling in love with because some small part of her, she knows, already has.

**Author's Note:**

> Because it's what I do (that and write angst) title has been taken from the Mountain Goats song "Evening in Stalingrad"


End file.
